Editing British Museum (section)

===Foundation (1753)===
On 7 June 1753, [[George II of Great Britain and Ireland|King George II]] gave his [[royal assent]] to the [[Act of Parliament]] which established the British Museum.{{refn|group=lower-alpha|1=By the Act of Parliament it received a name – the British Museum. The origin of the name is not known; the word 'British' had some resonance nationally at this period, so soon after the Jacobite rebellion of 1745; it must be assumed that the museum was christened in this light.<ref>The question of the use of the term 'British' at this period has recently received some attention, e.g. Colley (1992), 85ff. There never has been a serious attempt to change the museum's name.</ref>}} The [[British Museum Act 1753]] also added two other libraries to the Sloane collection, namely the [[Cotton library|Cottonian Library]], assembled by [[Robert Bruce Cotton|Sir Robert Cotton]], dating back to [[Elizabethan era|Elizabethan]] times, and the [[Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer|Harleian Library]], the collection of the [[Earl of Oxford|Earls of Oxford]]. They were joined in 1757 by the "Old Royal Library", now the [[Royal manuscripts, British Library|Royal manuscripts]], assembled by various [[British monarchy|British monarchs]]. Together these four "foundation collections" included many of the most treasured books now in the [[British Library]]<ref>Letter to Charles Long (1823), BMCE115/3,10. Scrapbooks and illustrations of the Museum. Wilson, David M. (2002). ''The British Museum: A History''. London: The British Museum Press, p. 346.</ref> including the [[Lindisfarne Gospels]] and the sole surviving manuscript of ''[[Beowulf]]''.<ref group="lower-alpha">The estimated footage of the various libraries as reported to the trustees has been summarised by Harris (1998), 3,6: Sloane 4,600, Harley 1,700, Cotton 384, Edwards 576, The Royal Library 1,890.</ref>

[[File:The North Prospect of Mountague House JamesSimonc1715.jpg|thumb|right|[[Montagu House, Bloomsbury|Montagu House]], {{circa|1715}}]]

The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public and aiming to collect everything. Sloane's collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.bmimages.com/preview.asp?image=00032676001&imagex=90&searchnum=0001| title=The British Museum Images| publisher=Bmimages| access-date=4 July 2010| archive-date=11 May 2011| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110511191549/http://www.bmimages.com/preview.asp?image=00032676001&imagex=90&searchnum=0001| url-status=live}}</ref> The addition of the [[Robert Bruce Cotton|Cotton]] and [[Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer|Harley manuscripts]] introduced a literary and [[antiquarian]] element, and meant that the British Museum now became both [[National Museum]] and library.<ref name="world and its people">{{cite book| last=Dunton| first=Larkin|title=The World and Its People| url=https://archive.org/details/worldanditspeop05duntgoog| publisher=Silver, Burdett|year=1896|page=[https://archive.org/details/worldanditspeop05duntgoog/page/n46 38]}}</ref>